In 2014, Airbnb was fined €30,000 ($33,913) by the Catalonian government for a "serious" breach of laws, which stipulate that any residence rented to tourists must also be registered with the Tourism Registry of Catalonia. The company was also fined $65,000 in 2015 for the same offense, and the city continues to ramp up its efforts to find offenders: Barcelona has doubled the number of investigators seeking out illegal rentals, and next year, will have more than 100.

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New York City

In October 2016, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law a ban on short-term rentals on home-sharing sites. Renting out an entire apartment for a stay of less than 30 days is illegal—and even advertising such a rental is illegal, with fines up to $7,500. In February 2017, two individuals were fined $17,000 between them for renting out a residence for fewer than 30 days.

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Reykjavik

Tourism is booming in Iceland, so it makes sense that Airbnb would be, too. However, the practice has been regulated in Reykjavik, with a new law stating that as of January 1, 2017, people can rent out their apartments for up to 90 days per year before needing a hospitality license. They can also earn a maximum of one million Icelandic kronor ($8,785) per year. However, prospective Airbnb hosts will still need to get their property registered, which requires meeting health and safety regulations. Icelandic police are taking violators seriously and have raided several Airbnbs believed to be operating illegally.

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Amsterdam

After imposing a €24,000 ($26,000) fine on an Airbnb owner in October 2015, Amsterdam's message was loud and clear: It would aggressively regulate the home-sharing practices in the city. In February of 2016, city officials allocated more than $1 million to gather facts about illegal rentals via "dating scraping," in which they pull information from various websites. One year later, in February 2017, the city levied a record €297,000 ($334,000) fine on a landlord and agency. In the city, one of Airbnb's most popular locations, only the owner of the unit can rent it out, for a maximum of 60 days at a time, and to no more than four people at a time.

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Paris

The City of Light is one of Airbnb's most popular destinations, with some 55,000 listings in town. In order to catch hosts who aren't adhering to Paris laws that forbid owners from renting out their flats for more than 120 days a year, authorities in the capital randomly carry out "raids". According to a study, many landlords rent their homes for more than the allotted time. “We can’t have entire neighborhoods or buildings turned into tourist homes," Mayor Anne Hidalgo's housing adviser told Bloomberg. "That’s why we’re fighting to keep Parisians inside Paris and we won’t let tourist rentals eat up their space.”

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New Orleans

Some in the Big Easy have long questioned Airbnb, and the city currently has more than 4,000 listings. In a place where tourists outnumber residents 25 to 1, the City Council on October 20 voted to ban short-term rentals in the French Quarter (save for a small stretch along the Bourbon Street entertainment district), and to limit whole-home rentals to out-of-town guests to 90 days a year.

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Santa Monica

In 2015, Los Angeles's next-door neighbor Santa Monica instituted some of the toughest laws against Airbnb in the country when it mandated that hosts will have to live on the property during the renter’s stay, register for a business license, and collect the city’s 14 percent occupancy tax. Nine months after the regulations took effect, the city had issued 650 violations, with the vast majority going to Airbnb and VRBO.

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Berlin

Laws enacted in May of 2016 stipulate that landlords are forbidden from renting out apartments to short-term visitors, with a hefty penalty up to $113,000 should they choose to do so. There are some exceptions: People can rent out rooms, as long as they don’t cover more than 50 percent of the entire floor space; and landlords can still apply for short-term rental permits.